100€ 50k Gtd PokerStars - Fold Equity + Pot Equity = ¿EV+?

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100€ 50k Gtd PokerStars - Fold Equity + Pot Equity = ¿EV+?

BN: 18505
SB: 17027
BB: 20000
UTG: 16449
UTG1: 27491
LJ: 23570
HJ: 14210 (Hero)
CO: 20000
Villain is 20/16 in 390 hands. 3bet 6% Fto3bet 55%. Call3bet 11% 4bet33%
Raise first 17/32/29/57/57

OR MP: 33-44-66-A9-AJ

Regular of midstakes.
Preflop (90) (8 Players)
Hero was dealt A J
UTG folds, UTG1 folds, LJ raises to 150, Hero raises to 390, CO folds, BN folds, SB folds, BB folds, LJ calls 240
Villain has an open raise in LJ of 32% and he´s moving a lot in this early stage so i think in this situation is better 3bet IP than cold call to avoid a possible squeeze and because he fold more than 50%. Anyway cc could be fine too, i think.
Flop (870) J 9 3 (2 Players)
LJ checks, Hero bets 400, LJ raises to 1260, Hero calls 860
Std cbet in 3betpot with top pair and villan check/raise. I never fold this spot, but if i reraise i think i can´t follow if villan reraise again, and vs hands like QsTs/QTo, QsKs, KsTs, QQ, KK, AA(unlikely) and sets i have less than 50% of equity (only vs KTs 49%), so my plan now is bet/call and reevaluate turn with top pair + backdoor nuts flush draw.
Turn (3390) J 9 3 K (2 Players)
LJ bets 2400, Hero raises to 12560, and is all in, LJ calls 10160
Here is the crux of this hand:

Villan bets strong (70%) so here I:

A) Fold. Maybe the most common line, but I think it´s so much weak.
B) Call. I have 8 outs for nuts flush draw, 2 outs for trips and 3 outs for double pair. At the end, i only have 7 solid outs, for the nuts flush draw. Trips and Double Pairs not guaranteed me has the best hand at river, only a strong hand with showdown value.
C)Reraise. I don´t like because If Villain shoves, i would have a very difficult decision, most of the times having to do a call with a weak hand and a draw.
D) Reaise Allin: This is the option i thought. And here is my reasoning:

My hand has 20% of equity vs sets, 25% vs AK, 15% vs QTo and now i can discard KsTs, QsKs, QsTs (unlikely). So i value a 20% of equity for my hand, from turn to river. I decide to shove because I believe that I have more than 31% of Fold Equity. If this is true, my move is EV+ because at less, 31% of the times I will win this spot when villain folds, but the times villain call, I will will 20% of the times.

In my consideration I think he more than 31% of the times he will fold hands like TT, QQ, AJ, AK AA, and sometimes bottom sets like 33 (at first, for the possibility I would have a better set and then for the texture of the board and the stage of the tournament with very deep stacks). So i hope he call with JJ, KK, and nothing more, because the only draw he can have here is QsTs, improbably and he will never fold.

Villain tanks 2 minutes and finally calls.
River (28510) J 9 3 K J (2 Players)
Final Pot
LJ has 3 3 Hero has A J LJ wins 28510

This is my first hand in our forum, thanks for all the feedback. :)

17 Comments

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CairyHunts 11 years, 2 months ago

Adios amigo!

A couple of things first:

1) This hand is a total trainwreck

2) Why do we want to play 500bb pots versus solid regulars?

3) You're guestimates on your overall (fold)equity are insanely ambitious.

Prelop: There's no need to 3bet here for the reasons you mentioned, because there's so little evgain in squeezing here by later positions, the only thing we achieve here is bloating the pot pre, which is fine w a strong valuehand, but i just don't see the benefits in this scenario, and we're getting very little folds anyway this deep. So the reasons that remain are value and initiative, tho initiative is highly overrated this deep and we're already in position.

On the flop: When he calls your 3bet, you have succesfully narrowed down his range into hands that flop well, pairs that mine sets, and maybe some traps that see very little merit in 4bet blowing you of the hand. This is also the reason why I would prob not 3bet pre, because his range will play pretty awesome versus our actual hand. Anyway, so far so 'good'.

We flop TPTK w BDFD, which is kinda the nuts in general, so cbetting here is obviously good, but then we get check raised. Here's where things become really interesting. On a flop like this, versus a good solid regular, when we get checkraised, we should really be very wary of a couple of things.

1) He's never bluffraising here, at best he's semi-bluffraising QTs here, but this deep i'd assume him to flat your cbet and realise his equity on turns and play accordingly. Same goes w other poss FD's. He should also just call TT, and evaluate turn.

2) His range becomes sick linear. If i would range his checkraise here its: 33/99/JJ and QQ+, i disregard QTs here as stated above.

Now verus that checkraising range, which is valuehands only we have 16.5% equity. So the only way we can realise our equity is our BDFD or a couple of other runner runners. This is just too little overall to continue, and this makes it a mandatory fold for me. Even if there's a 1/100 chance that this guy gets that out of line in bluffraising this flop, I would still just comfortably fold my TPTK here.

Couple of sidenotes:

1) If you want to 3bet, fine, it comes down to personal preference, i just play pretty easy going pre ante and don't want to bloat that much being that deep vs good players

2) I really like the turn jam, however it's like one of the very few times a turn will come that actually gets us in a spot that we can have somewhat of added fold equity.

3) Yes we can rep 99/JJ, again it's just really ambitous, and people just dont fold sets ever.

Conclusion, just fold on flop. I don't want to get involved in 500bb pots vs very linear continuing ranges of solid regs, when there's just too much monies to be made of other spots on the table.

A small ps. The entire dynamics of this specific hand changes when we play oop, i.e. in terms of getting bluffraised etc. Also, i didn't really get into turnplay that much because i'm 100% convinced we should fold flop.



Aleksandra ZenFish 11 years, 2 months ago

Didn't see you post while i was writing, excellent analysis :)

ID disagree a little tho on turn jam you liked, i simply don't think he has even remotely close  fold equity to be EV plus , and to top this goes your good observation - why are we playing as bloated pot with good reg that deep !!

CairyHunts 11 years, 2 months ago
Ha, the only thing i really liked about it, was that it shows a big heart. Its most def not +EV, but wouldve been a nice brag if he did fold a set - highly unlikely tho ^^


Tom M 11 years, 2 months ago
Really has me thinking now.


I feel like in game I'd tell myself with the A of spades we're too strong to fold to a single flop c/r like this.

But you're right ... the range I constructed for him means we need to hit an A, J, or running spades a lot of the time.

Yeah ... I can dig. We're going to face a large turn bet and we may not even make money on the river.

Question is ... can we all do this in game?


Aleksandra ZenFish 11 years, 2 months ago

Interesting perspective Tom, I sometimes fold with ease and sometimes just get that fishy instinct that persuades me that i can out and he may slowdown on later streets if i call..which in reality never happens when u re against good reg player

So maybe good spot to over think our usual  play lines

CairyHunts 11 years, 2 months ago
Hi Tom,

Well look at it this way, let's say we are villain, what hands are we willing to go broke on oop in 3bet pot pre ante w 250bb effective vs someone we probably don't perceive as a fish? There aren't many.

One of the key problems i have in this hand is that we as hero have the ace of spades, so this eliminates villain having NFD's he might semi-bluffraise on the flop, and i just don't think there's a lot of value in doing so with like KQ of spades. So that leaves like T8ss and QTss, for straightflushes.

We're just doing poorly against 33-99-JJ-J9-T8ss-QTss and QQ+, which imo are the hands that are giving us action here. Even if a J turns we're not going to have the best hand always, same with an ace, and our implied odds are very limited anyways. We might get one street off QQ+ and QT/T8ss (and J9 when ace turns), but thats about it.

And as we can see in this spot bluffraising becomes a very -EV proposition when people are too sticky in 3bet pots in general, this deep. It might work vs me, well good job sir if u do so, but i just been heroing so many regs in spots like these over the course of time, and they almost always had it. Like, 99,5% failsafe. So if we take bayes theorem as a concept, thank you mister Greenwood, it doesn't really matter if we're getting bluffraised here 0,5% of the times. The conditions in this hand are pretty unique too, so I won't be losing any sleep over him potentially owning me here once in a lifetime.

I just throw the Ace and the Jack in the muck, and give him 15bb for xmas :)

Merry xmas! Going to be social now, so prob won't reply that soon :-)

Aleksandra ZenFish 11 years, 2 months ago

I kinda am not sure you can fold a person who reraised you on flop, 31 percent of the time on the turn, looks to me like very optimistic and not very likely,people simply do not fold sets in MTTs or very strong made hands , as played your hand has still nut outs on turn, and has very low equity against made hand, so i wouldn't mind a call there, because many rivers would slow down the villain - and let you show down the hand , tho as played, unless you hit a spade it is unlikely you would win

Stephen Chidwick 11 years, 2 months ago

Hey suzzezive, welcome to the forums. I am fine with pre flop and flop though I would cbet significantly larger on this board. When you are analysing how much fold equity you need, it is not enough to calculate that you need to win the pot 51% to profit as the pot will be much larger when he calls and you have little equity. To work out the break-even fold equity you need for shoving to be at least as good as folding we can do the following math;

equity of shoving = equity of folding

fold frequency * our stack if he folds + call frequency * equity in pot when called * size of pot when called = our stack if we fold

x*18200 + (1-x)*.20*28500 = 12500....where x is fold freq and therefore (1-x) is call freq

x*18200 + (1-x)*5700 = 12500

18200x + 5700 - 5700x = 12500

12500x = 12500 - 5700

12500x = 6800

x = 6800/12500 = 54.5%


So we can see that for the turn shove to be profitable villain has to be folding to it at least 55% of the time. This is way too ambitious and even 30% would be hard to imagine...what hands is he folding? T8s missed but thats pretty much it. We need to be confident our opponent will be folding a lot of set combos to make this a shove.

CairyHunts 11 years, 2 months ago

Question remains, do we fold to his x/r or call? I think i broke down a lot in regards to x/r range etc, im just very interested in how you would see this from your perspective ingame, and if my assumptions in this spot are correct more often than not.

I kinda gave up on effectively bluffcathing in these spots, because villains have it like all the time. THis can be due to variance obv, but most likely not.

Also, i agree with the cbet sizing.

Suzzezive 11 years, 2 months ago
Hi Stephen: At first, thanks for your feedback. And thanks to Aleks, Cairy & Tom, too, by your excellent analysis of the hand.

I´ve been reading all the comments along the last days, and working along this hand, and yes, like Stephen said, the maths for the fold equity was not right in my original post. I need more than the 31% villain folds on the turn to get a shove with a positive EV.

Although now I´m pretty sure that is uncommon villain would folds more than 55% of the times if his range has 33-99-JJ+ and some combos of T8/QT/J9 and flushes. Even 30% of the times is too ambitious.

I´ll keep this in mind next time I try make a semi-bluff at the turn with my draws.


CairyHunts 11 years, 2 months ago

So he's bluffraising here frequently enough to profitably call and evaluate turn, okay. Like i said, might be due to variance or w/e, its just not happening for me. But aight, let's assume we're going to have enough overall equity w his (semi)bluff/value x/r range, about half a deck of turncards will be pretty disgusting for our actual hand - even spade turns are meh in a sense -, and we can expect him to bomb turn here on all these, so i assume we're folding those turns? Now let's say the turn is a brick, like 5d, do we station here and fold river? A jack or an Ace would be interesting.

It just like, no matter how i look at this hand, i see very little positive outcomes on turns and rivers for our actual hand(strength). Unless we assume he's giving up on all turns he should be continuing firing with his bluffrange, I don't think there's much merit at all to station flop and evaluate turn. Not saying its bad, just marginal.

ANyway, makes up for an interesting discussion nevertheless.


p.s. i'm thinking about our spr here with our normal cbetsizing, as played spr is slightly higher.

Stephen Chidwick 11 years, 2 months ago

I think he has some bluffs are raising flop to fold out our AK/AQ combos given we bet so small on this wet of a board but will shut down if we call...we have a lot of hands that wont be folding turn even if we do with this hand on a brick. We are basically never folding spade turns and boardpairs are pretty good for us...contrary to a lot of our range. We also have position with a ton of money behind and can potentially bluff some runouts.

Aleksandra ZenFish 11 years, 2 months ago

With opponent betting 2400 and we have 12560 behind we have enough room to call and play rivers

What if stacks were different, and turn raise of opponent would pot commit us? Would you chose a call or a fold on turn

Sam Greenwood 11 years, 2 months ago

I think preflop and flop are fine. I think calling the turn is the correct play. I think shoving the turn might be okay in theory but people don't actually fold sets two pair often enough to make it good. In reality you have a made hand that beats all his bluffs and a strong draw and he rarely folds a better made hand. Call turn is the play.

piterlanguila 11 years, 1 month ago

Hi, what a surprise, Im the villain in this hand and remember it perfectly. I will expose my point of view:

Preflop is ok, in first place, I'd think ur 3betrange in there would be strong, so I got good odds to call  I also agree with your reasoning on flop. I think AK we could probably remove it from my x/r range in flop, cause I dont even have the bdfd so that would be a randomness

If you have all that information about me, I think you also forgot to think about my agg postflop.

What I dont think that must be ok is the turn, I dont know why to convert a hand like that one with a lot  of SD value into a semibluff. You have 1 blocker with the As and that improves your move of course, but I still think that the correct play is call turn. As you were the 3bettor, with your move in turn I would think about a range AsK,AsQ, QsQ, TsT,AsA, KJ, KQ and some KK, so I thought that was enough for me to call

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